Business process communication relationships involve the exchange of ideas and documents about, and the coordination of efforts of people involved in, business processes. Business processes are often anchored by documents that embody critical information. Tracking the exchange of such documents (and their revisions) and coordinating the efforts of the people involved in the business processes can become complex and difficult. Typically, the exchange of documents begins by sending email attachments; however, this quickly spreads across a collection of software categories including email, document management, calendars, customer relationship management (CRM), virtual data rooms (VDRs), business process management, cloud storage, text messaging, social networks, computer files and folders, and more.
Even just tracking email attachments used to exchange different documents from different people can be difficult. There is no map that shows and controls who has access to what documents or what documents each person has. Even if one were to implement a system to get a handle on email attachments, coordinating the people and information in a business process can span disconnected systems and tools. As a result, users are left with a fuzzy and incomplete overview of their processes and information exchanges.